The Technology Behind The New iPhone 5S Camera Is Incredibly Clever — Here's How It Works

The camera on Apple's new iPhone 5s comes with some pleasant
surprises.

It's got a higher resolution
and more automatic tech to make sure your photos are perfect.
Best of all, it can take 10 photos at once and picks the
clearest, sharpest one without you having to do
anything.

The latest, greatest iPhone
camera may still have the 8 megapixel resolution of the iPhone 5,
but it increased its sensor area by 15 percent, to a 1.5-micron
pixel size. Bigger pixels means more light can get in, and so the
new camera can capture more detailed photos in low
light.

The phone also automatically
adjusts your white balance, exposure, tone map, and autofocus.
If you're trying to snap an action shot, it can
auto-stabilize by taking multiple shots and blending the sharpest
parts into a single image. If you feel like slowing
life down, you can play back your 120-frames-per-second videos at
a quarter speed.

You can also hold down the
shutter to activate the camera's new burst mode, which takes
10-frames-per-second and will suggest individual shots or a
sequence of the best photos.

Sick of ugly color distortion
caused by your flash? The new camera boasts "true tone" dual LED
flash to match the color balance of the light in the room, either
with cool blue or warm amber light.

Reuters

Beyond regular pictures, the iPhone 5s camera can take either
square or 28-megapixel panorama shots and it comes
with built-in filters, so you might not even need to change
anything before sharing it on Instagram.

Sure, most of these features
can be found in typical point-and-shoot cameras, but that's the
point — the iPhone now has all the basic capabilities of a
standalone camera so users don't need an extra camera.
Apple